When the animal appeared, I thought him less like a dog than an imitation of one; he ought to have had green wheels and a flannel tongue. He is a priggish little thing, who knows when there are peas for dinner, and expects to be asked to beg at tea-time, instead of being ashamed of his tricks, like a decent dog. He is, actually, offended if no one asks him to make a fool of himself. I know he thinks that all ladies ought to like to see a little dog beg so nicely—it ought to make them laugh. I always smoke in his face when he does it, which I wouldn’t do to any other dog; but he maddens me. The merchant threw down his hat wearily, snapped his fingers at “Punch,” as the little beast is called, looked through the letters that were on the hall table, and then asked for his wife. She was in the garden, and there we found her sitting among the remains of tea, struggling with an acrostic in some magazine. The angry butler caught up the teapot, as if it had made a face at him, and bore it off to refill it, evidently against both its wish and his.
Mrs. Merchant has a great deal of a certain quality, definite enough, but for which I know of no name, which is in part natural goodness and, in part, only a queenlike unawareness. Whatever it is, it reacts on some submerged part of my character, and produces in me a sort of street arab whom I do not recognize. You know that I am not fast nor vicious nor dishonest, only an ordinary person enjoying life, yet with this woman I feel like Eve after the Fall. I rush helter-skelter from every topic of conversation, covering my harmless, natural thoughts with platitudes. Some serpent has told her that I have an “artistic temperament,” and I see her straining her mind, enough to rupture it, in efforts to appear “understanding.” I am supposed to know how many pictures Lord Leighton painted, and what are “the things to admire” in the Academy—“all the nice, out-of-the-way things,” she calls them. I told her once that I should like to draw the huffy butler, and she said it had never occurred to her that he was picturesque, but perhaps I was right, and what costume would I like to “do” him in.
Now, please do not remind me that a moment ago I was blaming these people for covering their instinctive thoughts of kindness, and that I spoke contemptuously of uniforms and tea-trays, while I now confess to covering my own thoughts with platitudes. The truth is that this is the most self-conscious household I ever was in, and when I see them all rushing for covert, of course I catch the panic without knowing what is the matter. Then, when all is calm, I get very angry at seeing myself and them tightly wrapped in moral shawls of one kind or another. The sight of the others’ shawls makes me conscious of my own, and I begin to tickle all over and fidget with annoyance.
We had such a good dinner! Vol-au-vents, and mousses, and soufflés, with ice inside them, and such horrid coffee! Mrs. Merchant lit a cigarette afterwards, spluttering when she got any smoke, and chewing the end to ribbons; not as a hospitable fiction, for she did not begin until after I had finished; but she says she likes an occasional cigarette. You do not smoke, I know, but you have fifteen love-affairs a week, so I can explain the absurdity of the occasional cigarette in terms that you will understand, by saying that it is as if some one told you she did so enjoy being made love to, now and then—about once a year—by a really nice old gentleman with a bald head, so long as he did not attempt to kiss her.
Some people came to dinner that evening. I had forgotten to tell you, being so busy about the food and tobacco. I shall call every one whom I meet here—including the Merchants—by the name of whatever they look like, because then you can tell that inquisitive Bessie, if she asks you, that you do not know whom I have met. She enjoys everything too much for it to be quite right to describe people by name to her. She stores things in her mind, and brings out plums for her guests in a way that is more hospitable than discreet.
I shall call the people who came Mr. and Mrs. Ritz-Trotter, Miss Darling, and Mr. Friseur. I am always puzzled as to how the Mr. Ritz-Trotters get wives. They are all right in an office, or on a board, or as butlers, or in any kind of man’s work (except soldiering, or sailoring, or diplomacy). But why does anyone want such a person in the house to keep? If one had dozens of husbands, it would be useful to have one Mr. Ritz-Trotter to manage the shares, and tell one where to sign things; but as we are limited to one, it seems such a waste of a unique opportunity to choose that sort. When Mr. Ritz-Trotter was young, he can, at best, only have been like Mr. Friseur, who looks to me altogether a bad egg so far as companionship is concerned.
I have called the young one Friseur, because he is like a hairdresser’s assistant, though that is, perhaps, scarcely fair on the hairdressing profession.
Personally, I do not like the chatty young man at Beau’s, who tells me that my hair is a very dressy colour, and that Blackpool is likely to be full this year; but at least he has a definite nervous system and vertebræ, so that he can jump about. I expect he will develop some day into a cheery old person, whereas Mr. Friseur, who is only in the first stage of becoming a Mr. Ritz-Trotter, will go on getting more and more depressing.
Women like Mrs. Ritz-Trotter are wonderfully adaptable. I think that if she were taken away now and given to a pirate, the natural fidelity and cheerfulness that keep her attached to her husband would turn her into a very attractive woman. But to acquire any decorative value these gems of character have to be cut by a life of more active horror than her present one. She was dressed last night in very expensive clothes, just enough like those of the demi-monde to be thought up to date, but not sufficiently like them to scare her magnate, who is as conscious of the habits of such ladies as a jelly-fish is aware of the presence of titbits on the shore, even if they are not actually within his reach.